The Six-Day War Itself

The Six-Day War Source: Israel Government Yearbook5728 (1967-68), Central Office of information, Prime Minister’s Office, March 1968, pp. 17-25 On the morning of Monday, 5 June 1967, Arab aggression led to the outbreak of air and ground fighting between Israel and Egypt. Within a few hours, attacks by Jordan, Syria and Iraq turned the fighting into war between Israel and the Arab States, Algeria, Kuwait and Sudan included, for they, too, dispatched combat units which took part in it. Instantly, Israel aircraft delivered a lightning assault upon the Egyptian air force and wiped it out in three short hours, and, on that same first day, the other enemy air forces were either wiped out, too, or badly mauled. Our armor, parachutists and infantry broke through in Sinai and the Gaza Strip overran the heavily-fortified lines of Egypt after bitter engagements and, thrusting hard and swiftly westward and southward, smashed seven Egyptian divisions and their nearly a thousand tanks. All Sinai was in our hands, the sea-lane to Eilat was open once more, and our troops stood on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. On the Jordanian front, our forces drove into Judaea and Samaria in a multi-axial attack, worsted the Arab Legion, and in less than three days had taken the entire area. Jerusalem, one and undivided, was freed. On the Syrian front, we stormed the Golan Heights for all its powerful defenses, its difficult terrain and an enemy that offered stout resistance until, at length, it was broken. Egypt lost all its aircraft and most of its army, and its navy was not unscathed. The air and land forces of Jordan and Syria were overwhelmed. Iraq’s contingent, except for air squadrons on air-field No. 3, never fought; its communications unit, posted in Jordan, was punished in a raid by Israel planes. So the war ended, with our aircraft in unchallenged superiority throughout, our soldiers established along advantageous lines at the Suez Canal, on the River Jordan and the Golan Heights. It had been a war fought to shatter the Arab aggression which had permanently plagued our lives, amounting latterly to boundless ferocity. It was the last, stern and fateful campaign in the war of nineteen years of belligerency waged by the Arab States against Israel from the first day of its establishment. The political and military preludes to the Six-Day War in the Arab camp are described elsewhere in this Year Book. By the morning of 5 June, then, Egypt had seven – including two armored – divisions in Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Jordan had seven infantry and two armored brigades, the infantry deployed along our border, the armor in the Jordan Valley. Egypt sent Jordan two commando battalions; Iraq moved a squadron to air-field No. 3 near its frontier with Jordan and began to maneuver infantry units in the interior. Syria marshaled its strength along our border: four infantry brigades there and two others holding a rearward second line; a spearhead of two armored and two mechanized brigades took post on the Golan Heights, and part of it was moved forward to the very boundary. In the air, according to published reports, the Arab States had between 600 and 700 aircraft, far more than Israel. Numerically, the Egyptian navy was many times © CIE 2014 www.israeled. superior to ours. The ‘defense’ pacts meant operational coordination between the Arab forces on all three fronts. The balance of power between Israel and its neighbors was gravely upset, the danger immediate. As the Egyptian forces moved northwards in Sinai, the Israel Defense Forces started to mobilize the Reserves, and the extent of call-up and readiness kept pace with every intensification of the Arab threat. On 5 June, the great charge of cumulative tension exploded thunderously. The Air Force From the first moment, the Air Force went into full action; its instantaneous and devastating strike on the enemy’s airfields has been mentioned. It achieved air mastery and kept it. Our pilots attacked enemy columns and emplacements on all fronts, transported our troops, did patrolling and communication fights, rescued comrades who bailed out behind the enemy lines, evacuated our wounded from the firing-line, and flew in and parachuted supplies. The ground-crews, in ceaseless and strenuous servicing, made it possible for our aircraft to take off safely again and again on their many missions: it was an unremitting discipline that added vastly to the effectiveness of the Air Force. Egypt, Syria and Jordan, with the two Iraqi squadrons, had 600 aircraft, 450 bombers and jet-fighters, the remainder transport planes and helicopters. On the first day, about 350 were destroyed on the ground and – a minority – in air fights. Egyptian airfields came under attack in Sinai and the Suez Canal zone, in the Delta and in the neighborhood of Cairo, right through to the Nile Valley, the shores of the Red Sea and up to the Sudan frontier; in Beni Suweif and Luxor long-range Topolev-16 bombers were the targets. It took a hundred and seventy minutes to write ‘finis’ to Egypt’s air power, infinitely less than our wildest optimism had envisaged; the destruction of 300 Egyptian aircraft grimly underlines what might have happened if these planes had been operable against our forces and our civilians. Among them 2343 30 Topolev-16 heavy bombers, 27 medium llyushin-28, 12 Sohoy-7 fighter-bombes, only just delivered, 90 Mig19 and 75 Mig17 fighters, and 32 transport planes and helicopters, including the large Mi-6 type. Jordan, Syria and Iraq had bombed Israel territory from the air on the first day. With Egypt now out of it, we turned to the airfields of Amman and Mafrak, of Damascus, Dameir, Seikal and Marj-Rail, and No. 3 in Iraq. Within an hour, all of Jordan’s 20 Hunter fighters, and its seven transport planes and helicopters had been dealt with; in Iraq, six Mig-21s and three Hunters; in Syria, 30 Mig-21s, 20 Mig-17s and two Llyushin- 28s, meaning two-thirds of its air force and the rest of it took off for airfields at a safe distance from our operational radius. The skies over the Golan Heights were in our undisputed control. After that, and even before it, two-thirds of the jet sorties were to aid our ground forces, in an ever-widening and more powerful cooperation of crucial importance on all fronts. © CIE 2014 www.israeled. It was not all attack. There was also transport, perhaps a prosaic way of describing the daring extrication of ‘downed’ pilots many kilometers behind the enemy lines rushing wounded from forward positions or parachuting men down into the heart of enemy emplacements in the midst of battle. All this by helicopter; transport planes carried reinforcements and supplies into battle areas. The strength of an air force is usually measured by the number of its planes. A better criterion is how many sorties it can carry out in a given time, which depends not only on the number of planes but also on the capability of ground crews. Our mechanics, armorers and fuelers worked round the clock, so that the planes could fly at top capacity, strike continuously at the enemy and sustain the sweep and élan of combat tot eh end. There never was a moment when our aircraft did not enjoy total serviceability. The citizens of Israel suffered almost no hurt from enemy air bombing; practically every enemy plane that entered our air space was shot down. The Navy The massive naval forces of the enemy never once took action, to disturb our sea- lanes, shell our coastal conurbations, or molest our forces from the rear. No commandos or saboteurs were landed behind our lines. Not one vessel of ours was hit. In the light of Egypt’s colossal buildup of naval strength with Soviet help, and of Israel’s geography, this was astounding. Israel’s little flotilla was not slow to attack, entering the enemy’s waters, beleaguering his ports and bases, penetrating his anchorages, inflicting damage on his ships. On the first night, in the harbor of Alexandria, several Egyptian vessels were hit; after midnight, an Israel destroyer and two torpedo-boats in the approaches of Port Said opened fire at a range of a thousand yards on two missile-carriers of Soviet make, scoring direct hits and forcing them to turn tall without even firing back. The navy, out of Eilat, took due part in the action that led to the capture of Sharm el-Sheikh. Land Battles The Southern Front The piercing of the forward defense positions in Sinai was carried through in a tri- axial offensive by task-force under Brigadiers Israel Tal, Erik Sharon and Abraham Yaffe, each made up of brigades of armor, infantry, parachutists, artillery, engineers and communications and medical units, plus a maintenance ancillary for duel, ammunition, repairs and supply, which permitted independent combat and movement over several successive days and nights. © CIE 2014 www.israeled. The break-through on the northern axis was by the Tal task-force, attacking in the Khan Yunis-Rafiah area, a two-brigaded position twelve kilometers deep with a strong protection of mines, tanks and anti-tank guns. The attack was mounted with great vigor by parachutists and armor, frontally and in a long flanking movement against the enemy’s southern element, and especially its artillery. Hard fighting went on for hours, but, even before the day was won, we had exploited the first gap to pass through a tank formation which burst out westward, overcame enemy positions at Sheikh Zueid and el-Jiradi and by nightfall had reached el-Arish.

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